Waking Up To ACA Daily Meditation
I often wake up anxious. My eyes pop open and my heart rate increases. Not because I'm in immediate danger or late for work. But because after growing up in an alcoholic home, my fragile nervous system is set to "High Alert". My survival instinct is programmed for any...
Measure Of Loss
Step Five: We admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our childhood abandonment. They say the difference between what you got and what you could have received is the measure of loss. Here’s what could have been: My...
Literature Is Truly A Worldwide Affair
In 2020, WSO established an International Literature Scholarship Fund, which currently has over $8,000 contributed. The purpose of the fund is to help countries around the world obtain literature. One example is South Africa, which was unable to purchase literature...
Survey Results Support Book Price Increases
A poll of ACA members that was placed in the March 1 issue of The Traveler asked these questions: WSO is considering an increase for ACA book prices due to substantial increases in printing and distribution costs. Have you heard about this? Would you rather see...
Waiting In Darkness: Discovering the True Self
She is impatient. She is alone. She has been counting the minutes, the hours, the decades for him to return. He never comes. No one ever comes. Yes, people have passed by and dropped in for a spell. They have idle chatter and intertwine their lives. There is...
This is for all who have been through a lot in life and survived
Debra L
Many Faces
This is a piece I painted a couple years ago (called "Many Faces") maybe when I first started my journey into trauma recovery and right before I came into ACA. I was trying to express dissociation and to me how it felt to be so fractured inside at the time and also...
The Healing Adult And The Child Within
The maimed child within:terrified,paralyzed with fear.Forced to trust daddy-Monsterwho’s unstable and dangerous –unpredictably explosive.Forced to trust bitter battered mom,who gave him birth,who’s drunk,slurring her speech,unable/unwilling to protect herselfor her...
The Selfish Empty Nest
Seventeen years spent on the family farm. Home from school to the shock of my room packed on the porch. My baby book, framed pictures of perfectly posed horses, trophies and ribbons, horse magazines with my name inside, plaid button up shirts on hangers, my well...
Loathing To Loving
I work at a magazine, and the first issue went to press in February 2017, five years ago. The theme of that issue was love, as it is every February. Oh, I’ve had loads to say on the topic! I’ve written about loving my husband and children, loving our lives in Lagos,...